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As I was doing my daily affirmations, earnestly repeating “I deserve love” while gazing at myself in the bathroom mirror, the phone rang. The name of the handsome actor I’d met weeks before materialized on my caller ID. A sign, I thought.

“Hey, this is Jeff from the other night.”

The other night? One of us had clearly slipped the space-time continuum. We’d been introduced weeks before in a theater lobby, and after an electric handshake, went our separate ways.

“How are you?” I asked, trying not to sound like a girl who had just repeated “I deserve love” 50 times and still didn’t quite believe it.

“Uh, good. I wanted to invite you to my

barbecue Saturday.”

As what? I wondered. A prospect? A pal? I couldn’t read his tone. But, sure, I said. I’d be there. With that, he hung up.

I walked to Jeff’s place humming “I Have Confidence” from “The Sound of Music.” By the time I got there, I actually had some. Once I found a comfortable seat on the fringes of the action, I realized that I knew — and liked — most of the other guests. By the time Jeff fixed me a plate so I wouldn’t have to give up my seat, I knew I really liked him, too. Later on, when I got up to leave, he pulled me aside and uttered those three loaded words: “I’ll call you.”

He didn’t.

Weeks later, I spotted him across the room at another party. We traded so many glances we could’ve been mistaken for bobbleheads, but neither of us made a move. Then, just as I gave up, Jeff, awkward and sweet, suggested we share a cab home. When the cabby asked for our destination, we looked at each other, speechless. Our pheromones held a silent confab, and Jeff gave the man his address. We spent the rest of the evening gazing at stars in his back yard. When the moment was perfect, and not a second before, he finally kissed me. All signs pointed to a favorable outcome.

But as the week wore on without any communication from Jeff, confidence became “Did I imagine that?” I looked for answers in the chip patterns of my Cherry Garcia, and finally, sadly, wrote him off as a moonlit memory.

Then he called.

He invited me over to watch a Yankees game. When I showed up, a bunch of guys sat around the TV. Things deteriorated when they suggested he look for a woman on Match.com. I checked to make sure I hadn’t accidentally worn my invisibility cloak. Jeff and I were clearly not dating.

Days later a friend encouraged me to call him. I’d rehearsed a casual message, expecting voice mail, but he picked up.

“I was going to call,” he said. “I meant to.”

Really?

“I kind of hate the phone,” he continued.

“I have e-mail,” I retorted.

“That’s even worse. Do you want to come over for dinner?”

Totally.

And that’s when I realized he wasn’t not calling me. He just didn’t live by the three-day rule touted in dating self-help books or share his dating play-by-plays with his Yankee-watching friends. And crowded parties turned him into a wallflower. Like me.

From then on, I relaxed and stopped keeping score. We settled into a rhythm. And one day, in perfect time, I realized Jeff and I had become “us.” We now share a dog, three cats, an apartment and that back yard. And it was more than worth the wait.

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